Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said the U.S.
can cut the deficit and spur economic growth at the same time,
and that short-term deficits aren’t the nation’s primary fiscal
concern.

The president pointed to the shrinking federal budget
deficit while arguing for continued spending on programs that he
said will foster growth, such as investments in infrastructure,
research and education.

“We are not lavishly spending on a whole bunch of social
programs out there,” Obama said today at the Wall Street
Journal’s CEO Council in Washington.

Spending cuts and higher tax revenue as the economy
improves helped trim the federal budget deficit to $680 billion
for the year ended Sept. 30. That’s the lowest in five years and
about half the record deficit of $1.4 trillion in 2009, the year
Obama first took office.

The tension between spending and shrinking the deficit is
one of the main issues between Democratic and Republican
lawmakers as they seek a deal on a government budget.

Negotiators in a House-Senate conference committee have
failed so far to hammer out a budget outline for fiscal 2014,
which began Oct. 1. The government is now operating on a stopgap
spending resolution which expires on Jan. 15. The impasse
creates the potential for a repeat of the 16-day partial
government shutdown at the start of October.

A top priority of the Obama administration and most
Democratic lawmakers is to replace about $20 billion in
automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, for 2014.

Deficit Priority

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin
Republican, said additional deficit reductions were “point
number one” for him as part of a budget deal.

If Democrats don’t agree to cuts in entitlement programs
such as Social Security or other reductions in any deal, Ryan
said he and fellow Republicans would support continuing the
sequestration cuts.

“We’ll take the spending cuts we’ve got, and we’ll take
the fiscal discipline that we have,” Ryan said at the forum
after Obama spoke.

Ryan said he and his counterpart in the Senate, Democrat
Patty Murray of Washington, have made progress in their
deliberations. He didn’t offer any details.

Earlier at the Journal event, former Obama adviser and
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said policy makers should
put more focus on steps to boost growth to avoid a prolonged
period of economic weakness.

Debt Limit

Obama and lawmakers also will confront raising the
government’s borrowing limit, which expires on Feb. 7. The
president said he doesn’t expect Republicans will again try to
use the debt ceiling as leverage to advance policy goals. The
standoff over raising the limit that was part of the dispute
leading to the shutdown earlier this year was a “dangerous
precedent,” he said.

Obama said one of the main drivers of the nation’s long-term debt continues to be the cost of health care. He said his
goal is to make health care “cheaper overall” and direct some
of the savings to infrastructure and research.

He said that even with its troubled rollout, the health-care law enacted in 2010 is designed to address the growth of
health spending.